Think Curb Appeal When Getting Ready to Sell

With home
prices up in some areas, the return on remodeling investments at resale can be
good. Making little changes can have big impacts when it comes to remodeling
your home to sell.

Some updates
will return as much as they cost in hotter markets, but unless your home is in
a rapidly inflating city, you may not get enough bang for your buck.

The lesson
isn’t to avoid remodeling your home. It’s to rethink your expectations. Do you want
to enjoy your updates for a few years? Or do you want to make your home more
immediately appealing to homebuyers?

If you’re
remodeling for your own household, updating a home has a legitimate purpose
that is unquantifiable. When you add square footage, update systems and
fixtures, or rearrange traffic flow, you improve the functionality of your
home. Refreshing wall colors, window coverings, and flooring adds to the beauty
and enjoyment of your home. Many would consider that money better spent, and if
you decide to sell in a few years, you’ll be ahead of the game in terms of
updates that will appeal to homebuyers.

But if
you’re remodeling strictly for the next buyer, there’s some risk. Will you
choose the right elements to appeal to the next buyer? What if they don’t share
your taste or appreciate the areas where you allocated your remodeling budget?

Start with what absolutely has to be done, whether you plan to stay in your home or not. You may be tempted to put off replacing the roof for an average of nearly $20,000, because Remodeling Magazine says it will only return approximately 72 percent of costs. But a new roof could make the difference in whether or not an FHA or VA buyer can buy your home and pass government inspection.

Otherwise,
stick to smaller updates that can yield big impacts in terms of curb appeal,
safety and building integrity. The top five cost-to-value projects that netted
the most return in a recent study were:

Replacing
the front door with a 20-guage steel door – 102 percent.

Manufactured
stone veneer — 92. 2 percent

Fiber-cement
siding — 84.3 percent.

Garage door
replacement — 82.5 percent

Wood window
replacement — 78 percent.

As you can
see, the most lucrative projects for resale were all about curb appeal. Seal
the deal with a new welcome mat, new sconces to complement the new steel door,
and potted plants for color.

Wow your
buyers on the outside and they’ll be more likely to choose your home over the
competition.